I am strongly opposed to HB 597. I share a summary of the major points of the bill below. This bill is currently still in the House Rules and Reference Committee; if it fails in committee, it will not proceed to the full House for a vote. If it passes in committee, it may not be until after the November election that the House votes on the bill.
The bill is written to repeal the Common Core in Ohio (mathematics and language arts). Note that science and social studies are not part of the Common Core, so anything you read or hear in the media that has to do with these content areas is not related of the Common Core (but is often falsely made to seem so).
Essentially, the bill would prohibit the Common Core and the PARCC assessments from being used in Ohio after the 2014-15 school year. For the following two school years, the state would use the old Massachusetts state standards, which Massachusetts has replaced with the Common Core (and a few additional standards that they wanted to include). During those two years, Ohio teams would be created to write standards for Ohio — but these standards must be “distinct and independent” from the standards previously adopted by the State Board. Then, in 2017-18, schools would use these new standards. Keep in mind that this means that in the next four years, Ohio teachers and students would operate under three different sets of standards.
Assessments would also be similarly replaced, but during 2014-15, schools would have to use the OAA and OGT as the standardized tests (as in previous years). Note that creating entirely new assessments is typically at least a three-year process, with the development of items, field testing, and finalization of tests.
In general, the teams created to write the standards would be nominated and appointed by an Academic Content Standards Steering Committee, which would include the Governor and other individuals appointed by the Governor and the leaders of the Ohio House and Senate. The leader of each subject area team would be appointed by this committee, and the other members would be teachers nominated by superintendents and appointed by the State Board of Education.
Some of the major concerns of supporters of the bill are:
1) Ohioans in general did not have enough input in the adoption of the Common Core in Ohio [note: 10,000 people nationwide provided comments during a public comment period on the draft — 300+ Ohio teachers, community members, and organizations among them — and two Ohio representatives on the writing team took a great deal of work that had already been done in Ohio to inform the work among the states].
2) These standards are not “tested” [note: these standards are highly based on sets of the best standards that previously were in use in the United States and other countries, as well as the dominant research on how students learn mathematics].
3) Personally identifiable student data will be “mined” by the federal government from the PARCC assessments [note: it is highly unclear what data supporters of the bill believe would be used that is not already gathered in current assessments, and there is no evidence that any inappropriate data collection would be initiated].
Write your state representatives! Urge them to consider the facts related to the Common Core and not what they may hear in unvalidated media outlets. Urge them to consider what is best for Ohio’s students and educators. Visit http://www.ohiohouse.gov/members/member-by-county to find your leaders’ contact information (click on any name to e-mail the representative through his/her page on this site).
